


Catching Her Fall

by madgirlwithabox (lamarnza)



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Angsty Schmoop, Comfort, Comfort Sex, F/M, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-11
Updated: 2011-12-11
Packaged: 2017-10-27 05:21:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/292042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lamarnza/pseuds/madgirlwithabox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Close to the stars, that’s what she wants. As high as she can and it’s still not high enough."</p><p>Rose is reaching, and falling, and the Doctor tries and fails and tries again to catch her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Catching Her Fall

 

    Close to the stars, that’s what she wants. As high as she can and it’s still not high enough. She rests her head on her knees, lips pursed in a pout because he can’t indulge her and he always does. Her halfhearted fingers extend, trying to brush the inky depths, dark like his eyes when he watches her between the branches. He supposes he could climb onto the rough roof, rust peeling off onto his fingertips as he uses the drainpipe as a hoist. Sit beside her, shingles sharp beneath him. She’d let him, he thinks, but he doesn’t. Instead he scrabbles into the tree that grows beside the house, branches meeting the roof and stroking it gently before they continue to proceed to the stars, closer than she’ll ever get. He just watches her, watches her expressions, where her face falls, even though he already knows, and he lets it.  
   
   Sometimes, either when she’s really drunk or really tired, she comes on to him, and pulls in close, like a secret, but it’s not right, can’t be right, so he puts her off. Tells her he wants to take it slow, when she’s ready. She claims she’s ready, stubborn like a little girl, wide eyes and round lips. When he’s weak too, he catches them, her eyes and her lips, but nothing else. He wants to wait for when she’s not too drunk or too tired to care, and she looks and she sees that it’s him and not _him_ and wants HIM.

    They spend time together, go on walks, read books, cook meals. He takes Tony out on adventures, sometimes she comes, sometimes she doesn’t. He watches her, always, and tries not to indulge in her skin, her smell, her touch, and it’s so hard he doesn’t know how he can do it because it hurts and the hurt _never leaves_. He thinks it’s because he knows she sees through him. He thinks it’s because she doubles over at the slightest prod, letting it all just wash her away, but finally, one day, he realizes it’s because he just loves her. He just does, and it _hurts_. It hurts because it burns, all of it burns, his hunger for her, his care for her, the fact that she only halfway gives it all back.

    So he sits, in the tree, watching and wishing and wanting, and his suit falls away to jeans and t-shirts and his smile fades from eager and unhinged to sad and weary just like hers. He watches her face and her body and lets the slight shifts, like light on silk, run off his nerves, giving it all that kind of _zap_ , like biting a lemon. He watches her face rise, and he watches it fall, her eyes always fixed on the stars and their infinite, solitary cycle, never on him. He lets it fall, because he tells himself ‘no,’ there is no way to catch it, since he’s all wrong even though he thought he was right like the test you forgot to study for until the class before.

    He could, he supposes, jump the six feet down from the branch to sticky, hard shingles cracked from the sun, and catch her lightly and softly, shedding all his ‘buts,’ and ‘maybes,’ and ‘let’s waits,’ but then she’d know how sad and inferior and incomplete he is, and that he _needs_ her, unlike _He_ does (where he only _wants_ her, never _needs_ her) so he just embraces it all, the quiet stargazing, pretending that he’s beside her, arm around her, her head resting on his shoulder. He pretends he jumps down from the tree and she brings herself back to earth and to him and this universe and smiles, and takes him back downstairs, never to return to this lonely wasteland, into her bed. But he doesn’t, but she doesn’t.

    And one day, he simply does. He doesn’t prep himself, he doesn’t ask for encouragement, he just does. He’s sitting, in the forked branches that are so perfectly concealed by leaves. She’s taken to sleeping up there now, and the sun must have lulled her off into an afternoon nap because she’s lying down, cheek picking up the weave of the pillowcase, her hair twisted around and splayed like the splattered halo of someone who took a step sixty floors up. And suddenly, he sees _her_ (in maybe a week or a month or a year), eyes shut, or maybe open, mouth closed, or maybe agape, fast asleep or dashed on the pavement, because all she has left is him, and in this strange world with this strange body that wants and wants and wants but won’t ever let him _give_ , all he has left is her.

    A breeze sprints past, stirring the leaves into a great big to-do, and he wonders what they could be talking about (he guesses he forgot a few languages).  It caresses her gently – how he wishes he could – a strand of hair sliding over her ear across her cheek. And he doesn’t know what that must feel like in her dreamworld, but he watches, recognizing all the signs, knowing what will happen, as she falls, and she’s falling in so many ways, legs tucking up, no longer long and tantalizing, but tense and coiled. Her knees retract into her stomach and her hands twine frantically into her hair, tugging and clawing. She looks small, smaller than he ever thought she could, and the sun doesn’t seem so sunny anymore, just garish and invasive, catching her tears like laughter and spinning them out in refracting wishes like lies. He jumps from the tree without realizing he’s jumping, waddling across the roof as fast as he can, because being _for her_ is entirely _him_. She looks like she’s going to hurt herself, and he reaches for her hands, trying to avoid injury to either of them. Catching her fingers, he feels them twitch, trying to break free, and he holds on all the tighter.

    “Rose, Rose, come on.” He whispers it like a prayer, and she closes her eyes tighter, a sob rebounding inside her throat, but not letting it out. He releases her hands reluctantly, moving his own to her shoulders, squeezing them firmly. She lets out a pained groan, biting her lip so hard he watches with fascination as the tender skin breaks.

    “Rose,” he says again, pleading.

    “No,” she whimpers, shaking her head, and he pulls his hands around to her back. She shakes her head again and falls into him, clutching at his shirt and all he can do is whisper in whatever language comes first and stroke the back of her neck with cobweb thin trails from his fingertips. She moves upwards, arms around his neck, pressing her lips firmly against his. She opens her mouth and as usual, he indulges, parting his lips to let her in.

    “Doctor,” she says, voice a bit rough as she catches her breath.

    He can’t help but smile. “Really?”

    “Doctor,” she says, mostly to herself, nodding.

    She cries more, bowing her head against him, and he places his palms flat and even on her cheeks, wiping back her tangled, sodden hair.

    “Rose Tyler, I’m sorry.”

    “I’m sorry,” she begs, pulling back her lips as another sob is suppressed and she stretches her jaw open, looking like a fish, trying to devour the world to fill up her pain. He feels like he’s trying to devour her, as the thin sheet laid on the shingles becomes tangled around their legs. The strap of her white linen summer dress slides off her shoulder, and he rebuilds it with his lips, feeling her fingers weave into his hair. He traces her contours, catching them softly, knowing just where they fall. She undoes the small, neat buttons on her dress’s bodice and arches over him as he indulges her. The rest of the dress is soon to follow, disappearing from view and possibly sliding off the edge of the roof.

    The sun catches her skin, lighting it up on the edges, spinning her hair out until every single  strand is illuminated. He plunges his fingers into the wild mass, finding the edges of those wonderful cheekbones of hers and kisses her again, with all he’s worth, like the world is ending. She works her way under the line of his shirt, pulling it up, running her fingers over his skin and he feels that _zap_ once again. When he kicks off his trousers and can feel the static between them, he doesn’t know what to do. He draws a complete blank, and terror fills him, because he needs her too much and wants her too much and she is so fragile because she’s still crying and he can taste the salt and the iron on her tongue. He is scared he is going to break her and he nearly does as she lets out a small gasp and he lets out a much louder groan. As she pushes against him he feels like a dragonfly skimming the surface of a very deep pond. And as she buries her head in his shoulder, crying again because all he can do (all he’s ever been able to do) is make her cry. She kisses his collarbone, moving up to his lips, and for once he feels her smile against him, every corner of her just _happy._ He feels like he should say something, because he always says something, but he doesn’t, and he pushes forward, sighing every time and she keeps smiling, laughing softly, because he must seem ridiculous, but then again, so does she. And he feels like he’s falling, like he’s jumped from a skyscraper and just as he’s about to hit the pavement, and oh yes he wants to, she catches him, softly and surely. His eyes flicker open, and he smiles dizzily. She looks the same, completely wrinkled and rumpled and dashed to pieces.

    “Wow,” he murmurs.

    “No hello?” She bites her lip, collapsing against him. She puts her hand on his chest, index finger tracing designs over his heart.

    “Wow,” he says again, intentionally this time, because now that his head’s clearing there’s so many other words he can think of (but there’s also so few).

    “You know we’re completely naked on top of our roof. Our summer _family_ house. Where my mum, dad, and kid brother are staying as well.” She sounds as if she could care less.

    “Oh, but that’s _brilliant_ ,” he smiles.

    She lets out a contented sigh, sitting up. Leaning over him, she picks his shirt up, tugging it on and getting quite tangled so he must help her. And help her he does, in every way possible, working his hands into every fold of the fabric and of her. She lets out a startled shriek as he rolls her onto her back, hair cascading over the edge of the roof.

    “Alonsy,” he says, grinning at her foxily and diving back into her. She lets out a moan and arches into him, wishing he didn’t say stupid things like that because they drove her wild and made her love him so much. She begins to tell him this, but can’t quite form coherent words.

    He rolls over again and suddenly she’s gone. He hears her yell suddenly and then he’s scrabbling at nothing.

    “Doctor!” she cries out, and his eyes snap open, darting upwards, to see her face disappearing over the eaves. Branches are snapping against his skin and with a loud crack everything goes black.

  
    He wakes up in bed, and strangely enough, he can sense her near him.

    “I love you,” she whispers, as his vision focuses and he can see her in a thin black silk nightgown lying beside him.

    “What’d I do?” he slurs, thoughts still muddled.

    She kisses him and for how long he honestly loses count, and he thinks Rose Tyler might be the only person in the whole of creation that can make a time lord lose track of time.

    “You fell off a roof,” she answers simply, and he can do nothing but groan in acknowledgement. Even though he’s the one who’s fallen, he catches her, just like he always has.

    And always will.


End file.
